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Bill Hader reveals how he shamelessly spoiled the 'Titanic' movie for rude sorority girls

Before Hader was famous, he worked at a movie theater.

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Bill Hader | Bill Hader speaking at the 2013 San Diego Comic… | Flickr

Spoiler alert: Before reading this article, you should probably know a few things—not just about the historical tragedy of the Titanic ship in 1912, but also the subsequent James Cameron-directed blockbuster Titanic. You’ve been warned. Here we go: the ship sinks, and things don’t go especially well for most involved. (Though some might argue the iceberg had no issues.)

titanic leonardo dicaprio GIFGiphy

Now that that's out of the way, let’s discuss comedian/actor Bill Hader’s hilarious-in-hindsight interaction with a few bullies at a movie theater back in the day. Hader recently appeared on his friend and fellow SNL alum John Mulaney’s Netflix show, Everybody’s in LA with John Mulaney, and shared the story of how being a jerk just might get a movie ruined for you.

The two pals have quite the history as writers and friends. In fact, one of Hader’s most popular Saturday Night Live characters, Stefon, was co-written by Mulaney, who would often switch the lines on the cue cards at the last minute, causing Bill to explode in laughter. Hader reveals some of the behind-the-scenes hilarity in an interview with Howard Stern, including the fact that “John and all the other writers are dying laughing because they’re just waiting for it.” Hader also talks about other co-stars (hint: Fred Armisen) who tried to get him to "break" due to his high anxiety.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

So, Bill sits down with John and laughingly says: “I got fired from a movie theater for ruining the end of Titanic. I was working in a movie theater, and Titanic hadn’t come out yet, and a sorority had bought out the movie theater. They were in the doorway, and I was going, ‘Hey guys, can you move?’”

Apparently, they did not move—and instead chose to insult his looks.

“They were making fun of me. They said I looked like Charles Manson. Which... I kinda did. I had a little bowtie on and cummerbund, and I was like, ‘Hey guys, please move.’ And they were like, ‘No.’”

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Bad idea. Karma struck quickly.

“So when they went in, as I tore the tickets, I was like, ‘Enjoy the movie. The boat sinks at the end. Leo dies.’ And they were like, ‘No, he doesn’t.’ I go, ‘Yeah, you think he’s asleep. But he’s frozen.’ And that showed them.”

Sadly, Hader had to be let go for that move, but his boss "came down smiling." He adds, "He was like, ‘Hey, Bill. I have to fire you.’ He loved it. Couldn’t look me in the eye, though.”

Of course, there’s already a Reddit thread about it. On the subreddit r/entertainment, user cmaia1503 posted the Varietyheadline: "Bill Hader Got Fired From His Movie Theater Job for Spoiling ‘Titanic’ to the Sorority Girls Who Made Fun of Him and Called Him Charles Manson: ‘Leo Dies!’""

Within a day, the post had 13,000 upvotes and climbing. One Redditor writes, “Bro got that kind of energy on and off the screen. Amazing, no notes.” Another adds, “I love that it’s not just a spoiler, but the mechanics. The film is going to play with your heart first. No Romeos for you, Theta Bi.”

And then this person says what a lot of us must be thinking (especially those of us who had this job in high school):

“Should have been promoted.”

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'Titanic' director James Cameron has commissioned a study to defend the movie's ending

Do you think Jack could have survived the night?

via Wikimedia Commons

"Titanic" director James Cameron.

Twenty-five years ago, James Cameron released his epic “Titanic,” achieving a rare feat in Hollywood: a box office smash that was also loved by critics. “Titanic” won 11 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, and raked in $1.8 billion at the box office, making it the third-highest-grossing film of all time.

Even though his film is one of the most acclaimed in Hollywood history, Cameron still can’t help himself from getting involved in the great debate about the film. Did Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Jack Dawson, die unnecessarily at the end of the film?

Specifically, could Jack have fit onto the door Rose floated on instead of getting hypothermia and drowning?

Cameron has previously dismissed the discussion surrounding the scene. “I’ve never really seen it as a debate, it’s just stupid,” Cameron told the BBC in 2019. “There’s no debate. But if you want to unearth all the dumbass arguments associated with it.”

Around the same time, he noted that Jack’s death was an artistic choice so the size of the door doesn’t matter.

"It was an artistic choice, the thing was just big enough to hold her, and not big enough to hold him," he told Vanity Fair. "The film is about death and separation; he had to die. So whether it was that, or whether a smoke stack fell on him, he was going down. It's called art, things happen for artistic reasons, not for physics reasons."

Regardless of how Cameron feels about the scene, the debate has raged on. “Mythbusters” proved that Rose and Jack could have fit on the door together. But they would have had to fit a life preserver beneath it to improve its buoyancy. Good luck putting that together in the frigid water.

America’s leading science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson has also poked holes in the scene’s logic by noting that Jack would have put up more of a fight to stay alive. "Whether or not he could've been successful, I would've tried more than once. You try once. 'Oh, this is not gonna work. I will just freeze to death in the water.' No, excuse me," Tyson told HuffPost. "The survival instinct is way stronger than that in everybody, especially in that character. He's a survivor, right? He gets through. He gets by."

Although, after Jack saves Rose from trying to jump ship earlier in the film, he notes that it’s impossible to think in such cold water.

"To tell you the truth, I'm a lot more concerned about that water being so cold," Jack told Rose in the film. "Water that cold, like right down there—it hits you like a thousand knives stabbing you all over your body. You can't breathe. You can't think."

Even though Cameron dismissed the discussion in the past, he has to be a bit bothered that the pivotal scene in his film is questionable enough to cause a rigorous, 25-year debate. So now he’s launched a thorough investigation into the scene to settle it once and for all.

“We have done a scientific study to put this whole thing to rest and drive a stake through its heart once and for all,” Cameron told Postmedia while promoting his new film, “Avatar: The Way of Water.”

“We have since done a thorough forensic analysis with a hypothermia expert who reproduced the raft from the movie and we’re going to do a little special on it that comes out in February,” Cameron continued. “We took two stunt people who were the same body mass as Kate and Leo and we put sensors all over them and inside them and we put them in ice water and we tested to see whether they could have survived through a variety of methods and the answer was, there was no way they both could have survived. Only one could survive.”

Cameron is doing all he can to end the “Titanic” debate, but no matter what kind of research he shows, the scene he filmed will always have a hard time passing the eye test when someone sees it for the first time. But, that’s not so bad, the scene always passes the heart test which, in art, is all that matters anyway.

And, as we know, Jack’s heart will always go on.

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Heroes

In the Trump era, the DiCaprio Foundation is stepping up its climate efforts. Big time.

With seemingly no one in the White House steering the U.S. into an environmentally sustainable future, who's going to take the wheel?

Leonardo DiCaprio has an idea who.

Speaking at Yale University on Sept. 19, the actor and activist announced his foundation is giving a whopping $20 million in grants to over 100 eco-groups dedicated to fighting climate change, protecting indigenous rights, and wildlife conservation efforts, among other issues.

It's the largest portfolio of environmental grants ever given by the DiCaprio Foundation, according to the group, which chose to unveil the figure at John Kerry's Kerry Initiative climate change conference.





"These grantees are active on the ground, protecting our oceans, forests, and endangered species for future generations — and tackling the urgent, existential challenges of climate change," DiCaprio said.

Thank you John Kerry for hosting today's #YaleClimateConference. We must all work together to combat #climatechange....

Posted by Leonardo DiCaprio on Tuesday, September 19, 2017

The DiCaprio Foundation, which raises money in large part from high-profile fundraising events, didn't beat around the bush either: Washington's indifference toward crucial environmental issues is making matters worse.

While President Donald Trump and the Republican-led Congress weren't mentioned by name, their inaction were certainly part of the discussion.

“This round of grants comes at a critical time," explained Terry Tamminen, the foundation's CEO. "With a lack of political leadership and continued evidence that climate change is growing worse with record-breaking heatwaves and storms, we believe we need to do as much as we can now, before it is too late.”

DiCaprio has spoken out against Trump's dismissal of climate change before.

In June, shortly after the president announced plans for the U.S. to leave the Paris climate accord — a global agreement between nearly every nation to drastically slash carbon emissions — DiCaprio slammed the unpopular move, calling it a "careless decision."

“Our future on this planet is now more at risk than ever before," he wrote in a statement. "For Americans and those in the world community looking for strong leadership on climate issues, this action is deeply discouraging."

Leonardo DiCaprio Schools Trump on Climate Change

As Donald Trump––aka our Climate Denier in Chief––prepares to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement, Leonardo DiCaprio reminds us why that would be so fucked up:

Posted by Fusion on Wednesday, May 31, 2017

With help from groups like DiCaprio's, however, Americans are stepping up to the plate — with or without their president.

The U.S. might meet its carbon reduction goals outlined in the Paris agreement despite Trump's lack of support.

An initiative led by Michael Bloomberg, for example, has united dozens of mayors, governors, businesses, and universities in remaining committed to the Obama administration's Paris pledge to slash America's carbon output by 26% from its 2005 levels by the year 2025.

It could, in a sense, nullify any formal withdrawal from the accord.

“The bulk of the decisions which drive U.S. climate action in the aggregate are made by cities, states, businesses, and civil society,” Bloomberg wrote in a letter to Antonio Guterres. “Collectively, these actors remain committed to the Paris accord.”

There's ways for you to get involved and stay committed too.

Consider supporting one of the many environmental groups that will receive grants from the DiCaprio Foundation or nonprofits like the Sierra Club or NRDC to make real change when it comes to climate action.

Heroes

Mexico's president reacts to pressure from Leonardo DiCaprio to save a species.

On May 10, 2017, actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio took to Twitter to save a marine species.

"The vaquita is the most endangered marine mammal in the world," he wrote of the species, which can only be found off Mexico's shores in the Gulf of California. "Join me [and the World Wildlife Fund] and take action."

It may seem like an average tweet, coming from one of the biggest environmental advocates in the world. But the tweet has had global ramifications.

Photo by National Geographic Channel, courtesy of the Everett Collection.

As DiCaprio noted in a Facebook post that same day, unsustainable fishing has caused a steep decline in the total number of vaquitas.

There may only be 30 left in the gulf right now — a 90% drop since 2011 — which also explains why there seem to be so few photos of the rare porpoise in the wild.

A rare photo of a vaquita. Photo by World Wildlife Fund.

One major reason for the falling numbers is China's hunger for the totoaba fish, which also only lives in the Gulf of California. Mexican fishermen use massive gill nets to catch the totoaba and ship the marine animals to China — an illegal practice in itself. But all too often, vaquitas get caught in these nets and are needlessly killed.

This doesn't just affect the vaquita either. Illegal fishing is harming many other marine species in the region, too — species that local communities rely on for food and business.

DiCaprio linked to a petition by the World Wildlife Fund calling on Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to act now to save the species in his Facebook post and tweet.

Among other demands, the letter urges the president to implement and enforce a permanent gill net fishing ban.

Photo by Alfredo Estrella/AFP/Getty Images.

To Nieto's credit, his government has taken some steps to save the vaquita.

In 2015, Mexico implemented a two-year gill net fishing ban. But it wasn't properly enforced, advocates argued, which helps to explain why vaquita numbers continued to dwindle. What's more, what little effect the ban did have on dissuading fisherman is now gone entirely because the ban expired in April 2017.

DiCaprio's posts did actually catch the attention of the Mexican president, who responded on Twitter.

In a series of tweets, Nieto explained how his government has upped efforts to save the vaquita in recent years, such as expanding its protection zone in the gulf and committing 300 marines and 15 boats to monitor the area.

Still, DiCaprio's call to act seemed to spark new urgency from the Mexican president, who made a very public commitment to ensure the vaquita won't be lost forever.

Not everyone has over 17 million Twitter followers like DiCaprio, but we all have a voice.

Use it to tweet your support for the Word Wildlife Fund's petition and put more pressure on Nieto and Mexico to save the vaquita.

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